


Splintered Frame

by firewoodwander



Series: scribbles for the soul [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Bittersweet, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, mixed ratings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:15:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29461869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firewoodwander/pseuds/firewoodwander
Summary: One-shots, prompts, requestsHardcase/Jesse/Kix, Tup/Dogma, Rex/Echo, Cody/Bly, Wooley/Rex, Cody/Wolffe, Boil/Waxer, Neyo/&Bacara
Relationships: Boil/Waxer (Star Wars), CC-1138 Bacara & CC-8826 Neyo, CC-1138 | Bacara/CC-8826 | Neyo, CC-2224 | Cody/CC-3636 | Wolffe, CC-5052 | Bly/CC-2224 | Cody, CT-21-0408 | CT-1409 | Echo/CT-7567 | Rex, CT-7567 | Rex/Wooley, Dogma/CT-5385 | Tup, Hardcase/CT-5597 | Jesse/CT-6116 | Kix
Series: scribbles for the soul [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2163966
Comments: 33
Kudos: 52





	1. Hardcase/Jesse/Kix, Permitted Development

**Author's Note:**

> Pairings, characters, ratings in chapter titles, warnings in notes!

Hardcase knows Jesse and Kix are meant to be a thing. It's true, right? They're just  _ meant to be. _ So it's his mission, he thinks, as best friend, to help them get there while neither meddling too much nor ruining all of their friendships.

So he plans. He's sneaky about it—or at least he thinks he is. No one ever calls him out on his making sure they spend time as much time as they can together, or his mild suggestions that  _ Oh hey, Jesse mentioned wanting to see that holofilm if anyone managed to get their hands on it, _ and  _ Kix has been looking for a new razor, I thought you could give this to him as a surprise!  _ No one ever tells him to calm down or step away, let them work it out on their own. They roll their eyes and smirk and smile and let him get on with it, and he winks as if they're in on the joke.

Well, anyone can see those two are perfect; he's certain they understand.

It's however many years in the future, long, long since the end of the fighting and the pain and the death, that Hardcase blinks in surprise.

There's a sleep-weighted arm flung around his waist and a nose in his neck, a thigh a shin and a knee tucked between his legs, a bedroom all around him growing warm under the light of the morning sun. He wonders, then, at the obliviousness of his former self, and just when it was that right under his nose his best friends switched his plan of two to _three._


	2. Tup/Dogma, Rainfall

The rain patters against the window pane and the sighing leaves of the trees outside. It isn’t soft, but it’s peaceful, and Tup has always liked the sound of the rain. 

The pane is washed with gusting waves of water, obscured from the outside and warping the greenery in shivering fronts. The glass is ice cold to the touch and wafting frigid air at the back of his neck. Just slightly draughty around the top corners but that’s okay—they’re all wrapped up in blankets, fleece lined throws and vast woolen things over their thin middle layers. The nest of pillows they’ve built is a buffer between their spines and the window ledge. Tup pulls his knees closer to his chest, and lets his head fall atop Dogma’s where he sleeps on his shoulder. The smooth softness of his handmade tunics is a familiar little scrap of love under the hand on Dogma’s hip.

This beautiful window seat was a gift. When Fives and Jesse and Hardcase had cropped up on their doorstep with their tools and scrap materials and announced they were there to help Tup with the decaying greenhouse and shed in the garden—Rex had crept around while his back was turned with a shoulder-load of beautifully cured wood and upholstery. 

Dogma had been so smug when Tup had found out he’d been in on it. 

And now Dogma sleeps, curled into his side and undisturbed despite the storm. His hair has grown out since they left. Tup’s fingers slip through the warm curls that hang over his brow in quiet appreciation. There’s a scar above his temple, the same as Tup and everyone else, and he wonders if that’s more of a reason than any freedom they’re celebrating.

His tattoo scrunches sweetly as he twitches and sighs and doesn’t wake. Tup smiles, turns his head so he can press a kiss to the top of his head. His nose buries in the gentle scent of mint and tea leaves; against his will, his eyes begin to prick with tears.

It’s a miracle they’ve made it here. He’s going to treasure every moment.


	3. Rex/Echo, Captain Commander - Teen+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Trans character (Rex), discussion of dysphoria & sex.  
> Notes: Non-sexual nudity & intimacy.

The sheets on the bed aren’t soft. But they’re standard issue, and they’re warmer than anything on Kamino, and they’ve never known anything else.

So the sheets aren’t soft, but neither of them really know that.

They’re yet to pull the blanket past their waists, anyway. Echo’s perfectly happy with that, lying fitted sweet and close to Rex’s back as he is. The hand he has over Rex’s waist is moving slowly over his abdomen, the other trapped where his arm is tucked beneath Rex’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing Rex says since they rinsed the sweat from their skin. “I don’t know why I’m like this.”

Echo tips his head forward to brush his lips over the line of his shoulders. “There’s nothing to apologise for,” he whispers against him.

Rex laughs on a breath, rather humourless, and lifts an arm to tangle their fingers over his front. Echo’s heart relaxes more with every point of Rex’s heat that covers his skin.

“I’ve never wanted this. Never liked it—being different.” Rex lifts his other hand to gesture vaguely at himself. “It was bad enough having something visible like my hair. Lucky I made it out of my tube. The fact they saw the rest of me and didn’t immediately throw me into resource reclaim is a miracle…”

Echo’s arm tightens around his waist. Rex lets him, melting into the protective curve of his body like an ocean creature to a shell.

“It only got hard to hide when we got older. Even with the hormones, it was—obvious. I don’t think I ever got over it.”

“I don’t know how anyone could ever expect you to,” Echo murmurs. “Not something like that.”

Rex smiles again, squeezes their fingers. “Cody and Bly did their best for me. Wolffe and Ponds liked to scare the shit out of everyone else. Gree weaselled around the Kaminiise like no one else could. I had it good compared to any other sibling.”

“Even so—” Echo twists his trapped arm so he can sit up a little better on his side. “It bothers you. If you want to do something about it, if you want to—to stop, or whatever will make it better, then we can do that.”

Rex turns his head to look up at him, lashes wet, eyes a little wide. “No,” he says, but his brows are furrowing. He lifts their joined hands to his chest and rests them there, where Echo is more than happy to cup the breast he’s led to.

“I love you,” Rex tells him. “And I know you like me like this.”

“Hey, hey.” Echo lowers himself again, pushing his nose behind Rex’s ear. “That’s nothing to do with it. I love you too, you know. However you are. This body is yours and—well. What I’m saying is that Kix would be more than happy to do the operations, if it’s what you want.”

Rex snorts. “Kix doesn’t  _ know _ how to do the operations.”

“Yeah, but he’s been researching ever since he was assigned to you. He told me one day to just let him know, and if he can’t do it he’ll have the best people on the job in no time.”

A deep sigh lifts Rex’s chest under Echo’s hand. He shifts then, turning in his grip until they’re nose to nose and Echo’s sliding his displaced hand down to the small of his back instead. 

“Hello,” he says, and Rex rolls his eyes. He leans forward and kisses him. Echo slips a knee between both of his and happily soaks up the attention.

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” Rex continues when they part. “I don’t hate having it at all, usually. And I’m not going to stop having sex with you just because I sometimes get depressed after.” He kisses Echo again, apparently amused by  _ something, _ and hitches his leg higher over Echo’s thigh. “I don’t do things I’m not comfortable with, and I can enjoy my body as much as you do. I only have a more complicated relationship with it.”

Echo rests their foreheads together and smiles. “That’s one way of putting it. I only want you to know you always have the option, whether you want it or not. And—stop—” he pokes Rex in the side between words in admonishment, “—putting—my—preferences—over—yours! In fact, I’d  _ prefer _ it if you were as happy and comfortable as is practically possible, so there.” He sneaks his trapped arm back close to him so he can stroke his thumb over Rex’s cheek. “And I’ll never love you any less for it, I hope you know that.”

Grinning from his ticklishness and a little flustered, Rex nods. His right hand skims the line of Echo’s arm, then over his chest, settling over his heart in a mirror of the outline tattooed onto Echo’s other side.

“You know, with all that, I think you’re pretty kriffing amazing,” he sighs. He hugs Rex closer, runs fingers along the curve of his spine. “I think the only reason you haven’t been made the first CT commander yet is because Skywalker doesn’t know which form to file to promote your rank.”

“Echo!” Rex tries to sound some level of scandalised, but he’s rather betrayed by his loud and hitching laughter. 

“What? You know it’s true!  _ You _ caught him comming the Senator in distress because of the ARC requests.”

“I am—I am loyal to my general,” Rex manages between giggles. “Would I have ever tattled if such a thing happened?”

“Oh, get away!” Echo kicks him gently, gets an elbow to the side in return. When he tries to roll them Rex grabs him and uses his own momentum against him. They both end up in a heap on the floor, tangled in the blanket, but it’s worth it to hear Rex laughing again.


	4. Cody/Bly, Planetfall - Explicit

Often, the random realisations that occur to Bly are very sudden. He’ll perhaps have a thought, stray and innocent, only for the full weight of it—or even another—to slam him full force in the chest. Like this morning, having woken with the sun rising through their open blinds, when he was abruptly startled with the urge to _touch._

The man in his arms doesn’t seem to mind. Stretched out on their sides, Bly presses right up along his back as he runs his hands all over him. From caressing his strong chest, his side that rises with every slow breath, to smoothing over shoulders and mouthing lips against his neck. To gripping one thigh and lifting it up high, curling knee to toes over his waist as Bly thrusts his cock deep and slow into his heat.

Cody groans, arches simply beautifully into Bly’s chest while he nips and suckles marks into his skin.

“Faster,” he whispers, clenching down on Bly’s cock. Bly pinches a nipple with the hand trapped between Cody and the bed. “Faster, Bly, please.” 

Grinning lazily, Bly rocks into him a little more strongly, groaning with the electric pleasure each drag of his cock inside Cody’s gorgeous, slick-tight ass elicits. Cody moans with him and lifts an arm to hook a hand behind Bly’s head, scratching nails over his scalp and pulling him ever closer. 

Bly kisses him, when he turns his head. Kisses him deep and filthy and slow, with feeling. Cody’s tongue meets his eagerly and the noises it pulls from them resonate between them; Bly digs his fingers into the meat of Cody’s incredible thigh and fucks him harder, his strokes longer, pushing them both towards the edge of the shelf of pleasure.

Cody cries out when Bly wiggles his trapped arm down so he can palm his cock. He wraps his fingers around him and strokes to their rhythm, kissing Cody again and again while he shudders. Cody fills his arms, his senses, has his full attention, and all Bly wants is to sink into his presence and let Cody complete him.

With another shudder and cry Cody is coming, hot over Bly’s fingers and striping up his body. He clenches down on Bly’s cock and Bly grunts, biting into his lower lip as he speeds up his thrusts for the legs that open wide for him. 

Neither of them are easily hurt, but he still takes care when he finally loses it not to squeeze too hard, bite too hard, fuck into Cody too erratically even as he comes deep inside him. It’s all the better to hear Cody’s whine trail off on a sigh while his body practically melts into Bly’s embrace.

The sun glimmers amidst the atmo-scrapers of the forested Coruscanti surface skyline. Broad bands of its light streak their skin with gold and warm them, gently, as they lie tangled together in the sheets of their bed. Cody’s fingers graze the edge of one of Bly’s tattoos as he catches his breath, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheek when Bly brings them to his lips and kisses the pads of every one.

He smiles, and he is beautiful.


	5. Wooley/Rex, Empty Corridors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [this ask](https://firewoodwander.tumblr.com/post/643856697608355840/maybe-212th-arc-rex-with-wooley) about 212th Rex!

The first time Wooley finds him there, he almost trips over his boots. He yelps a little, slamming a hand against the bulkhead to steady himself, and ARC trooper Rex does look satisfyingly apologetic; he of all people should know the dangers of blocking corridors. 

But of course, this one was barely frequented, except for Wooley, and Waxer and Boil who had first brought him and Longshot here, and apparently now their ARC. Their ARC, who leans up against the corner of Wooley’s favourite niche with a smokeless cig between his lips, knees drawn up to his chest now Wooley’s kicked his feet for him.

“Sorry,” Wooley says. He hopes Rex doesn’t notice how breathless he is and clears his throat. “Didn’t see you there.” 

“Wooley,” Rex smiles. “Nothing to worry about. Want to join me?”

Wooley can’t quite tear his gaze away from where it’s drawn to the movement of Rex’s mouth as he settles in beside him. The little white stick that he takes between his fingers to readjust—the way his lips curl around it in a small, private smile. 

Candy sticks, Boil calls them. Candy sticks filled with whatever the galaxy can get away with legally hooking their market on. Wooley’s just glad they don’t do the damage Waxer says they used to.

“You want to share?” Rex asks, flicking the cig between his two fingers again and holding it out. Wooley flushes with heat, caught, and takes it from him. Their fingers brush when he hands it back. Wooley swallows, and watching him place it back between his teeth, thinks it suits Rex rather more than it does him. 

(He tries not to think about how it felt when it passed between his own lips. How he could cut out the middleman and lean across this tiny gap between them. How Rex might not even object.)

“You down here for any reason, or just to get away?”

“Boil’s arguing with Sepia Company’s Sergeant again,” Wooley sighs. “Just wanted some quiet.”

Rex nods. “I can leave, if you’d like the place to yourself?”

“No,” Wooley tells him, too quickly. “No, it’s er… It’s fine.”

Smiling, Rex lets his head tip back against the wall. He looks over at Wooley, lets his eyes trail down and back up again. 

“Always good, spending time with a friend.”

Rex drifts on the wind, or wherever the river flows. As an ARC, with his fancy pauldrons and kama and stunning frame, he’s often pulled to and fro wherever needed. But he wears his 212th gold like a badge of honour, and Ghost was where he made his name, found a home. And Wooley may be one of the shiniest of shinies, but Rex has always come back home, and always with a smile and a story and time for each and every one of them.

So Wooley catches his lip between his teeth and reaches out to touch the hand resting on the floor between them. Rex’s fingers twitch and part subtly to let Wooley’s slip between them, body warmth mingling with durasteel cold. There’s a smile on both of their faces as he squeezes Wooley’s hand. A secret, for the two of them alone.


	6. Rex/Echo, "How long have you been standing there?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [this ask!](https://firewoodwander.tumblr.com/post/644182359170793472/request-time-if-youd-like-one-prompt-how-long)

Echo jumps visibly when he notices Rex watching him. That never used to happen, not to him; ARCs were too well trained to make such a mistake, even with the radio playing in the background to mask his steps. But it’s humanising, and it’s telling, and it fills Rex’s heart as much as it crushes it. 

He’s glad there hadn’t been a fresh glob of paint on his brush when he had, though. Rex likely wouldn’t hear the end of it if he’d messed up Echo’s artistry— _ removing it and painting over isn’t the same, Fives! _ —and he’d hate to cause him more trouble as it is.

“Hey,” Echo says with a small smile. “How long have you been standing there?”

Rex shakes his head and pushes off the door frame, wandering farther into the room to sit beside him on the sofa. “Not long,” he says. “Didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Well, congratulations. I’m sufficiently disturbed.”

“I don’t think that was my doing, necessarily.”

“Oi!”

Echo digs him in the ribs with his metal elbow—so, lighter than he would have  _ before. _ But  _ before _ was a long time ago, and Rex surprises himself sometimes with how accustomed he is to  _ now. _

“Still the same?” Rex asks quietly. He gestures to the print being painstakingly reapplied to Echo’s breastplate. Echo puts away his tools carefully and smiles.

“Always.” He leans across to kiss Rex softly, only a little more than a brush of lips and a breath. “Why would I ever leave you out?”

Rex snorts and kisses him again. “I’m sure there are plenty of reasons, but I don’t make it my business to ask questions I don’t want answers to.”

“That sounds like a big lie for someone whose biggest hobby is digging up things most of the galaxy will never know about.”

Rex laughs and takes Echo’s hand, crude metal pads for digits cool but soft against his skin, and tugs him up to stand. Echo sets aside his drying armour and goes, easy, letting Rex pull him into his arms and begin to sway him along to the melody of the music threading through the safehouse. 

“When are you heading out?”

“Tomorrow,” Echo sighs. “The offer is still open, if you want to come.”

They turn, pressed together from shoulder to knee. 

“Thank you,” Rex tells him, “but I still have plenty of things to worry about that you shouldn’t have to.”

Echo’s mouth twitches in the flicker of a sad smile as he rests his forehead on Rex’s shoulder. “We can help you. Not all of our jobs are essential, and the others would be more than happy to be doing something that isn’t fighting pirates too stupid to know the wrong end of a blaster.”

Sighing, Rex places a hand over the back of Echo’s neck and strokes calmingly down the metal remnants of his spine. “It’s all right,” he says, “I promise. You do have important things to be doing. And while I’d never say no to your help, cyar’ika, it’s safer if I do this by myself.”

It’s the truth, in some ways, and in others it isn’t. Echo knows this—Rex knows Echo knows this—but he doesn’t argue, only holds Rex tighter and leaves sweet kisses along his neck.

“And you…” The words stick in Rex’s throat. “If you ever… The boys are your family now, I know, but if you ever wanted it… You can leave with me. Any time you want. Just call, and I’ll come for you.”

“A dangerous promise,” Echo says. “You’ve picked up my calls in the middle of a shootout. Don’t argue with me, I know you have. But I appreciate it. And I love you.”

“I love you too,” Rex murmurs against Echo’s temple. “So all I ask is that before then, you keep coming home to me.”

“I can only do that if you’re here to come back to,” he argues. When he lifts his head, there’s a glint of mischief in his eyes that’s tinged with sadness. “So the same goes for you.”

“Always,” Rex says, even though they both know it’s a promise neither can keep. But for now they can, in this quaint little place that only they know, dancing loosely to the soundtrack of a war they ended long ago but will never, truly, leave behind.


	7. Cody/Wolffe, Heart and Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [this ask](https://firewoodwander.tumblr.com/post/644206102035267584/if-you-dont-mind-me-asking-for-a-prompt-could) :D

Wolffe’s expression doesn’t change as his hand comes to rest on the door frame of the empty bunk room. But it’s a close thing. 

Phantoms of children long gone meander around him like an overlap of time upon time, each version cycling slightly older, slightly surlier, broader and bulkier with bare months between them.

“You can’t do that!” one shouts. He hops down from his open pod and storms towards Wolffe. “Alpha-17 said it’s  _ my _ turn!”

Another spectre answers him from elsewhere; whatever is said, the child bristles.

_ “Cody! _ Cody, that’s not fair! You can’t  _ do _ that!”

A shout of  _ “Watch me!” _ echoes crystal clear through his memories. Wolffe frowns along with his miniature ghost, but this fragment of past melts so quickly with his amusement that his eyebrows barely twitch. From where he is he can see just the barest hint of the scratches they made in the metal beside their pods. A five-tally, drawn across years, one for each name adopted. 

“Wolffe.”

Even steps clip down the corridor towards him. For a moment, when Wolffe turns, the dirty, painted armour is gone. There’s no 212th Attack Battalion, no Marshal Commander, no scar. Just Cody, as young as their age might have once had them believe.

He blinks, and the illusion breaks.

Cody holds his helmet under one arm. He has ash streaked across his cheek, and dark, dark smudges beneath his eyes. There’s blood on his greaves, and splashed across his cuirass. Wolffe has been drilled too hard to let his skipping heartbeat show on his face.

“It’s not mine,” Cody says anyway, wry and heavy as if his shoulders are being dragged towards the bottom of Kamino’s sea. “I was worried. We haven’t heard anything from your sector for a while.”

Wolffe startles. He feels his saliva catch and thread in his throat, but works it down in order to speak clearly into his wrist comm. 

“Sector clear. Minimal structural damage. Priority low.”

Whoever’s on the other end relays an affirmative, and when he looks up Cody is watching him curiously.

“Feeling nostalgic?”

Wolffe gives him an unimpressed look. “Not really my style.”

“If asked, I don’t think I’d be able to pin down your style regardless of your frosty exterior.”

They both stand in the doorway together, looking in on a room that might as well be just the same as any other in the sector. Cody’s arm slips around Wolffe’s back and his hand settles on the hem of his kama; Wolffe is helpless to do anything but lean into him.

In the next moment he’s hit with another memory, from elsewhere and at another time. A memory of sitting on a bench pressed together like they are now, only with Wolffe’s heart beating out of his chest as he leans into Cody’s warmth through thin tunics, gaze planted firmly everywhere but the boy next to him and  _ not _ thinking about the distance between their hands. Where Fox and Bly snicker but say nothing. Where Seventeen takes one glance at them and then looks as if he wants to throw himself from the city walkways.

“Come on,” Cody says, breaking him gently from inside his mind. His arm jostles Wolffe into continuing on through the facility, turning away from the room and its hundreds of layers of shadows. 

But if there’s one good thing that’s come of change, Wolffe thinks, it’s that the both of them are still around to walk beside each other.


	8. Boil/Waxer, Daisy fields

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [this ask!](https://firewoodwander.tumblr.com/post/644693575985184768/cleanse-our-souls-friend-perhaps-some-soft-boxer)

If Boil had been any deeper in concentration, he probably would have jumped a mile when Waxer knocked on the door frame. As it is, he looks up, thankful that he hasn’t pricked his finger again on his needle, and waits.

Waxer opens his mouth to say whatever it is he came for, and stops.

“Is that my shirt?”

Boil blinks at him, looks down at himself. 

“Er,” he says. “Is it?”

Waxer laughs. “I’ve been looking everywhere for that! I thought someone had pinched it off the line!”

“Sorry?” Boil offers. He looks down at it again, and really, now he thinks about it, he’s definitely seen Waxer wear it more often. Hell—it even smells like him. Boil had barely noticed, what with the way Waxer had been doing his best cephalopod impression not long before he’d dressed.

“It’s all right,” Waxer promises, “it’s fine. Just stop taking things before I put them away, yeah?”

_ “I _ put them away, half the time.”

“Yes, but sabotaging my half is just foul play.”

Boil smiles at him. If he’s honest, they’re still both wholly enamoured with their new lives. Freedom. Stability, even. Luxuries they’d not known to even dream of. So Boil sets down the patch work he’s doing and stands to meet him, running hands up arms made strong with years of turmoil before sliding down to slip around his waist.

“I’ll tell you what,” he offers. Waxer grins back at him and plays fingers over his chest. “If I ever sabotage your chores again, I’ll accept whatever forfeit you see fit.”

“Within reason,” Waxer reminds him, because he’s disgustingly  _ fair _ like that.

“Within reason,” Boil agrees. “Or I get Numa to do it.”

Waxer  _ gasps. _ “You wouldn’t!”

“I would.”

“No!”

“No, of course I wouldn’t,” Boil snorts. “You think I would do that to her?”

“Well no, but—”

“But!”

“You’re mean when you’re grumpy!”

“I’m never grumpy with Numa!”

Pouting, Waxer gives him a look. “You’re always grumpy with me.”

Boil can’t help but laugh at him, just a little. He lifts a hand to his face to sweep a thumb fondly over his cheek, looking unabashedly into the pretty eyes that watch him.

“I’m not grumpy with you,” he promises, softer. “Never properly.”

Waxer tried to roll his eyes; Boil doesn’t let him. He pulls him forward to kiss the frown from his lips, again and again until he feels him smile, until he hears the small puffs of breath that mean he’s trying not to laugh and failing spectacularly.

“Come on,” he says eventually, pulling back. “You came in here for something. It couldn’t have been about collecting Numa from school?”

Waxer nearly jumps out of his skin. “Boil!” he hisses, “You’re going to make us late!”

They’re not going to be late—late is five minutes early, to him—but Boil indulges him regardless, smiling all the while.

It’s nice to be home.


	9. QPP Bacara/Neyo (& Dogma), House Pride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hogwarts AU with Bacara, Neyo and Dogma, who is their third year child now, as per request!

He finds them tucked away in a small corner of the library. Neyo, settled in between the shelves where he sits on the floor, propped against the wall, has only just gotten comfortable again now that Bacara’s decided to use him as an impromptu bed. And then over the top of his faded old history tome, in this old but dust-free forgotten corner, appears a small head and a scrunched, anxious expression. 

Bacara grunts. Neyo pretends not to notice for all of fifteen seconds.

“Looking for something?” he sighs. 

Dogma shrugs and shuffles fully around the corner, revealing that he’s down to his shirtsleeves even though the wind is turning sharp off the lake and the castle is draughty. His expression is almost sheepish; if Neyo didn’t know better, he’d think he’d gotten himself into trouble.

“Jumper, tat’ka?” Bacara rumbles.

“Er, sacrificed to Hardcase’s dancing wardrobe experiment. All of them, actually. He said he was planning it for a prank during the Halloween Feast, I told him I hope we get our clothes back—”

He cuts off abruptly. Neyo lowers his book by maybe an inch on Bacara’s chest to see him and his wonky green tie better. Bacara turns the page despite knowing he hasn’t read a single word of it. Bastard.

“I was, um. I was thinking of trying out for the team.”

Bacara blinks.

“Well I just thought that—you know—it might be fun. Would get me on some people’s good sides. And I  _ like _ flying but I never really thought of it as a career path so it’s probably not really a good idea but I still kind of want to, and…” He scuffs his heel against the threadbare carpet. “That’s it really.”

“You want help,” Bacara surmises easily, his words slow but neither judgmental nor uncaring.

Dogma deflates like he’s been hit with a shrinking charm. “Please?”

“Where’s your cousin?” Neyo asks.

“Don’t know,” Dogma says. “I don’t think he cares that much about Quidditch.”

From what Dogma’s told them about his cousin, and by extension the friends they both keep, Neyo isn’t entirely sure that’s true. Or, at least, there’s  _ something _ about the game Tup likes, even if it isn’t the game itself. And he’s a decent player, too, so why Neyo finds himself snapping his book shut with a rather emphatic  _ thump _ and setting it aside (not before prodding Bacara with its dullest corner first), he has no idea.

“So,” he huffs. “How exactly do you think we can help you with that?”

They both go to Dogma’s tryouts. Well, Neyo goes. Bacara is on the team, in line for the captaincy next year. He hadn’t been able to help Dogma directly for obvious reasons, but there were no rules against  _ asking for pointers. _ Neyo hadn’t made a half bad keeper, either, Bacara had said. 

(And his is the only opinion Neyo cares to listen to these days anyway.)

So Neyo goes to the tryouts, and to Dogma’s first match. When Slytherin catch the snitch with a 50 point lead he’s the first down to the pitch  _ as always _ and is quickly running out of ways to make it appear like a coincidence. He saunters out, smirks at Bacara’s smug little victory smile he swears black and blue that he doesn’t have, and when he pulls him into a hug is… not as distressed as he thought he’d be to be reeling another body into their embrace. 

Dogma loses the last of his breath when Neyo and Bacara yank him into their sides. He’s grinning from ear to ear, vibrating with leftover adrenaline and nearly bouncing on his toes, already worming his way between them. The both of them are damp with sweat and dripping from the rain and are poking him in all the wrong places with their gear, but Neyo thinks, for a few minutes, he can forget about that. 

Bacara kisses him, Neyo, then, just at the corner of his mouth, because it’s a thing he’s been trying lately and also because  _ why bloody not? _ Dogma scrunches his face a bit because he’s an absolute child, so Neyo pokes him in the side until he’s squirming to get away, out of Neyo’s grip, to go and hide behind the less embarrassing group of people he reckons ‘tolerate’ him. Neyo and Bacara watch—Bacara’s arm sliding down to around Neyo’s waist to keep him reluctantly close—as the one with the odd birthmark lines over his head reaches out immediately for a high five and Tup tries (fails) to lift Dogma up onto his shoulders.

Neyo looks over at Bacara to find him already looking back, amused and lighthearted and windswept and tired all at once.

“You’re going to be the life of the party, you are,” Neyo needles.

“Don’t need to be,” Bacara tells him. “It’s not like I need to be there. And you never like them much anyway.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“…I heard the kitchens are usually quietest on Quidditch nights.”

Neyo smiles, sharp and mean. 

“Now you’re speaking my language.”


	10. Boil/Waxer, "You're shaking."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the request! This ended up a little different to how I first expected ':)
> 
> From [this prompt list](https://firewoodwander.tumblr.com/post/643513381079449600/prompt-list-i)

Waxer is beautiful. 

There’s always a voice in the back of Boil’s head, a nasty little one that sounds like his trainer’s, telling him that they’re all the same, just droids, nothing special about any one of them. And how could a droid be beautiful, it asks. A droid is nothing but a shell and an algorithm—executing a set of instructions programmed by higher beings. But Waxer said once that you can find the beauty in anything, if you’re looking for it. Despite his cynicism, his human fallibility, the cracks and broken parts Waxer lets show sometimes because he is only as strong as one man can be, Boil thinks that he truly  _ believes _ that. That Waxer believes everything can have an inherent beauty, regardless of morality.

But all the same, for another man who perhaps can’t show the expansive good-will Waxer does, to  _ Boil, _ Waxer is unequivocally, by all the laws of nature and all things good,  _ beautiful. _

And yet it’s something of a tragic beauty, what with him laid out perfect and peaceful, tucked into the clean white sheets of a medical cot. A monitor beeps sharply and steadily above him. Its cool blue is impersonal, harsh and unsympathetic as it stares down over them. It doesn’t change much, but that’s a good thing. 

Waxer’s hand is limp but warm in Boil’s. Boil isn’t sure how long he’s been here, only stepping away to give himself a cursory clean and change his blacks. Peva brings him rations and water and tells him off for not sleeping. Check wraps him in blankets when he does sleep and props his head on fresh pillows so that he won’t wake up unable to move his neck. And every day Cody reassigns his shifts and forwards him easy, mindless datawork to do instead. Boil is beginning to suspect that he isn’t getting half of what he otherwise would be, what with Waxer also out of commission. 

So he sits there, passing the cycles quietly, Waxer’s hand in his. Sometimes he’ll have flashes, stabs of pain that make him double over and struggle to breathe. Other times he’ll feel very little. Others again he’ll be dangerously optimistic, smiling at the members of Waxer’s platoon who come to check on their Lieutenant’s status. The strangest times are always at night, when the light cycle is dimmest and all that Boil can hear is the shuffling of distant, restless bodies and their steady breathing, accompanied by his own, variable respiration and the whisper of the ventilation.

After the first three times, every imagined twitching of Waxer’s fingers between his own manage to simultaneously fill his heart with hope and sink it with dread of disappointment—this time is no exception.

But the sound that’s hardly above a breath is too unexpected to be any creation of Boil’s mind, loud enough to be heard in the stillness of night. He looks up, startled, and blinks at the barest twitches at the corners of Waxer’s mouth.

“You’re shaking,” are the whispered words that follow. Hoarse, unsteady, woozy.

“Waxer?”

Eyelashes twitch, stuck with disuse and grit, blinking apart dazedly for eyes not quite focused yet on the world. Waxer shifts minutely, winces as his head turns. Boil falls to his knees beside the bed uncaring for how his chair tips, clutching Waxer’s hand tighter between both of his own. After a minute Waxer does manage to turn to face him, smiling and looking blearily up to meet his eyes.

“Boil…” 

And Boil notices that he  _ is _ shaking. His hands tremble around Waxer’s fingers, his whole body shudders with gathered tension as if the hyperspace chill has been seeping into his very bones. He shuffles closer to the bed so that Waxer doesn’t have as far to look, but by then the medics on duty have already slipped around his other side, having heard the commotion of Boil’s fall.

Waxer sips water through a straw when he’s handed a glass. He’s asked easy, yes-no questions that Boil tries his best to follow, but the sight of his beloved’s smiling eyes is already far too much for him to handle in his state of dizzying, sleep-deprived relief.

“You’re far too dramatic, you know,” Waxer’s voice cuts back through the haze. Boil inhales sharply and refocuses on his face, upon which the amused expression there only thinly veils anxieties—concern and guilt. Boil doesn’t know why Waxer would need to feel so, neither should he be wary of Boil’s infamously sour temperament; in all Boil’s soul, at this moment, he wouldn’t be able to dredge a single shred of anger for him. That kind of stress simply does not exist. All Boil wants for Waxer is to love him, to keep him safe, to hold him and breathe in his presence knowing he’s there in all his faculties.

So Boil smiles, however tremulous it may be, and reaches up to ghost just the pad of his thumb below the faded bruise around Waxer’s eye. Waxer smiles and curls seizing fingers around Boil’s palm. A solid, undeniable warmth Boil lifts to brush his lips. A touch filled with words and somehow void of them. All Boil needs is to meet Waxer’s gaze to know they’re going to be all right.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me here on [tumblr!](https://firewoodwander.tumblr.com/)


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